One of the writing groups I’m involved with starts each meeting with a writing prompt followed by a ten minute brain dump. Our October writing prompt was “Local gravestones begin disappearing…” Below is my quick story. It’s another fun one–and I’m starting to see a pattern in my own writing: a character loses his pants…and a dog is involved.
You’d be surprised how massive the hole is when a tombstone is removed. It varies, of course, depending on the size of the monument, but I had inadvertently discovered where a large one had been disappeared. Daylight Saving Time could be partially to blame, too. My late afternoon dog walk usually ends with a sunset shortcut through the cemetery. The wide open graveyard is empty by dusk, so Moose got to gallop free above the resting souls while I trailed behind. I enjoyed the solitude and the sound of crisp leaves crunching beneath my sneakers. Today, however, dark came an hour earlier than I anticipated. As a result, I found myself six feet under and in a sizable rectangular hole in the ground. I wasn’t dead and buried, but I was no longer walking amongst the living.
“Moose!” I yelled for my Irish Wolfhound. His enormous paws scattered leaves on the cold ground above me. “Moose!” I repeated. Then his panting face peered over the edge of my predicament. I’d have been happier seeing a fireman with an extension ladder, but Moose always brought a smile to my face.
“Good boy, Moose! Say, isn’t this where Gertrude Sampson 1845-1913’s monolith was yesterday?”
The dog pawed at the brown grass along the lip of the hole. He leaned anxiously forward and whimpered.
“No, no, buddy. You stay up there.” I searched the subsoil and clay edges of the pit. There wasn’t much to grab or to climb. I dug a toe into the dirt wall, which crumbled downward when I pressed into it. Climbing out wasn’t likely. I explained the situation to Moose. “Looks like I’m in a pickle, pal. What good would it do us, if we were both down here? Huh? You gotta think about that stuff, Moose.”
I had no rope, no steps, no shovel. Just my wits and my sweatsuit. I also had a 164 pound dog who wondered why I was horsing around instead of getting him home and scooping his after-walk bowl of Purina.
“Moose, I have an idea.”
A moment later, I had tugged my sweatpants down and over my shoes. The October air chilled my bare legs. It would only get colder, so with a firm overhand toss, I swung one pant leg toward Moose, keeping the other end in my outstretched hand. The pant leg flapped my dog in the face and fell back at me.
“Moose!” I barked. “Tug-of-war, Moose. Tug!” I demonstrated by putting one pant leg between my teeth and growling, hoping he’d get the idea. Again, I tossed a sweatpant leg upward and kept my arm extended with the other cuff gripped tightly. This time, the pant leg flopped in the grass and leaves beside Moose. It startled him, but he could never resist a game of tug-of-war. His jaws clamped on my sweats like a vice, and he began jerking backward. My baggy exercise trousers went taut.
“Good boy, Moose!” I growled fiercely, so he’d know that I intended to fight for my pants. As expected, my Wolfhound growled–doing his best to pull those pants out of my hands. Instead, he pulled me, hanging desperately onto the opposite leg, out of the pit while my sneakers scraped and clawed at the dirt walls.
“Guaaph!” I groaned, dragging my belly over the lip of the hole. “Ooof. Good boy, Moose! Good boy!” I relaxed the grip on my pants. Moose promptly shook his head side to side, flipping my cotton and elastic bottoms like a flag in a strong wind.
The moon cast an eerie glow across the cemetery, but the weirdest thing was that Gertrude Sampson’s stone wasn’t the only one missing. In the dim light under an indigo sky, I noticed that several headstones that had marked graves for over a hundred years were also gone. Where was the granite marker for Charles “Gusty” Gustafson 1853-1941? What happened to the monument for Otto Schmidt 1867-1932? And Adolf Brandt and his Beloved Wife, Mable? And the entire Sørensen family?
Someone was taking the gravestones–and about on hundred cubic feet of dirt from beneath them.
But why?
To where?
“Moose!” I called, climbing to my feet and brushing the dirt, grass, and leaves from my bare legs. “I need my pants back.”
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